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The First Stage of the Struggle
This came in the early 1800's. Religious qualifications quickly disappeared. No State has had a religious test for voting since 1810. Soon states began to eliminate property ownership and tax payment qualifications. By mid-century, almost all white adult males could vote in every state. -
Gerrymandering
This is the practice of drawing electoral district lines (the boundaries of the geographic area from which a candidate is elected to a public office) in order to limit the voting strength of a particular or party. -
The Struggle to Extend Voting Rights
Wyoming had given women the right to vote. -
The 15th Amendment
The right to vote should not be denied because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The amendment was plainly intended to ensure that African American man, nearly all of them former slaves and nearly all of them living in the South, could vote. The 15th Amendment simply states a general principle without providing for a means of enforcement was not enough to carry out the intention of the amendment. -
The Second Stage of the Struggle
The second major effort to broaden the electorate followed the Civil War. The 15th Amendment was intended to protect any citizen from being denied the right to vote because of race or color. Still African Americans were systematically barred from voting, and they remained the largest group of disenfranchised citizens, or citizens denied the right to vote, in the nation's population. -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
Congress passed a set of laws to enforce the 15th Amendment. -
Poll Tax
A poll tax was a tax imposed by several States as a qualification for voting. The 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, eliminated the poll tax as a condition for voting in any federal election. -
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
Is much broader and more effective than either of the two earlier measures. The 1964 law continued a pattern set in the earlier laws. It relied on judicial action to overcome racial barriers and emphasized the use of federal court orders called injunctions. -
The 26th Amendment
It provides that no State can set the minimum age for voting at more than 18 years of age. In other words, those 18 and over were given the right to vote by this amendment.